Dino Crisis: Global Displacement
by Jonas Grant
Summary: (Multiple storylines, I will prioritize the more popular ones.)The year is 2014, pure Third Energy has become a widespread but expensive power source, used mostly in luxury electric cars, power plants and advanced military vehicles, while cheap 3E derivative power cells quickly evict every batteries and generators on the market. What could possibly go wrong?
1. DCGD: Strauss 1

"Alright, Strauss," The female voice resonated in his helmet, "use your chin to press the thrusters' activation button."

Alan Strauss floated in space in what was essentially a kevlar-backed diving suit with carbon fiber hard points nailed to it, attached to the International Space Station by an altogether too thin wire clasped to his belt. These were the only things on the engineer's mind at that moment and he made the quite clear over the radio.

"The Exo-Suit zero point two is the most advanced EVA hardware available, Strauss, it's been in development for half a century…" Commander Bane trailed off, then spoke up again, a hint of malice in her voice this time, "The radiation-proofing isn't quite up to par with our current suits, though, so you might want to get this test over quickly."

"I read the manual and checked the schematics, _ma'am_," He called back, his arms floating in front of him as he watched Rio de Janeiro, lit up like a Christmas tree, "and I still say it's a piece of shit."

"Just hit the switch, Iron Man." Came a third voice, older and rougher, with a slight Russian accent.

"Firing thrusters..." Sighed the engineer, pressing the activation key with his chin. The shoulder thrusters would follow the motions of his arms and the boots ones would adjust their thrust based on the orientation of the hands…

In theory. In practice, Strauss rocketed like a missile so fast the cable securing him to the ISS snapped without a sound and curled up like a giant question mark before Alan could even adjust his course. He spun his hands backwards and cursed as the world around him turned to a blur, the Earth, Luna and the ISS fusing into a rapidly revolving hamster wheel, with the sun somewhere to his left.

"Too much pressure!" Someone called, three voices joining into a cacophony of panicked exclamations and frenzied advices until Bane boomed "Clear coms!" Alan, tried orienting his hands forward, but only managed to spin sideways, "Strauss!" the Commander began, now the only voice on coms, "release pressure on the activation key."

He did as instructed, his jaw clenched, vibrations from the suit's powerful thrusters causing his teeth to clatter. The spinning did not slow down, but the shaking did subside a bit.

"Now you need to fire thrusters sporadically in the opposite direction… Just stop spinning, you know how to do that, right?"

He did. One hand pointing forward, the other backward and his legs positioned like he had just taken a running leap, he nudged the smooth brass knob in his helmet, firing thrusters by short bursts, each of which gradually slowed the world down.

About three minutes later, Strauss was once again idle in space and struggling to keep his breakfast down, as the suit's helmet lacked the ample space of the modern ones and vomiting now would cause him to drown in his own bodily fluid.

"Check your batteries, Strauss, what's your power at?"

He flicked the Kevlar cover off his wrist mounted PDA and brought up the suit's readings. "Seventy percent and charging at five percent per minutes. 3E cells are all green."

"Damn… Can you make your way back here?" Bane was not concerned for her crew member, but she seemed very impressed by the EXO suit. Strauss, though this was his first mission in space, had spent a whole decade as a NASA engineer, and he'd never seen such a blatant disregard for safety procedures… Then again, he'd never met anyone who could get results quite like Bane could, so when the cigar choppers asked him to explain what had gone wrong and who was to blame for this incident, he would keep his mouth shut.

Two months before this mission, one of Bane's team mates, the resident tech expert, had gotten into a fight with Strauss over the latter's alleged sloppy work, almost costing the engineer his job. Strauss had angrily taken apart the rocket engine he'd just spent hours fine tuning, checked every parts for any evidence that would support the other man's accusations and, finding none, had re-assembled the engine in record time and chased the astronaut, an ex-marine pilot, out of the hangar in an equally impressively short amount of time.

It had taken a lot of blackmail and favor calling, but Bane had eventually managed to have Strauss cleared for the mission.

"I'm way out in the sticks." He noted, the ISS growing more distant every second, "But I should be fine, just don't expect me for diner."

"Roger that."

This time, using only twenty five percent power, he was able to get linear propulsion and steer himself towards the station, arms and legs spread like he was a ragdoll being pulled by its hips.

Tentatively, he leaned forward, transferring more and more power to his boots, as the station kept growing smaller. He had to correct his course multiple times, as he steadily increased his velocity, but soon reached a hundred percent power output and was soaring through space like a missile.

Even as a kid, when he'd decided he wanted to be an astronaut, he had not dreamed he could one day come this close to actual flight. Untethered by gravity, without a massive backpack or fuel reserves to drag around.

This suit might be the most dangerous thing he'd ever worn, its controls counter-intuitive and its aesthetics ripped straight off from a popular video game or TV show, Strauss would still vouch for it and pray they end up being standard issue within his lifetime.

He was smiling like a child on Christmas eve when he finally caught up with the station. The massive structure, though it seemed to be sitting still, was actually in a constant state of free fall and Alan, still feeling the effects of acceleration, felt like he was chasing a massive piece of plumbing down a bottomless pit.

He angled himself slightly to the right and gave his thrusters one last shove, flying straight into an open airlock and landing lightly on the inner door, the velocity difference between him and the station recreating a semblance of gravity for a short instant.

It did not last long, but was enough for the accumulated heat in his boots to sear off the pure white painting on the bulkhead. Sensing an impact in his back as the shoulder thrusters retracted, he checked the power levels again; thirty percent and filling up at a rate of ten percent per minute. His air recycling system reported another half-hour before its efficiency became compromised.

The air scrubbers had a fifty minutes guaranteed efficiency, an hour and a half could be squeezed out of them, if you liked living dangerously.

Looking up, Strauss cursed and looked back down quickly. Looking at the sun without a UV faceplate could leave you blind within a second, so it came as a surprise to Alan when all he saw was a dark spot dancing before his eyes, as if he'd glanced at a lightbulb.

The world around him seemed much darker, however, and he blinked multiple times, before the automated solar visor rose out of the way on its own, settling back on top of the EXO suit's helmet.

One of the suit's feature, which Alan had not paid much attention to, was a high level of automation, the suit detected harmful UVs, inbound micro asteroid, lack of breathable atmosphere or any spike in the user's biosignes and was programmed to respond by deploying the helmet and any countermeasures it contained before injuries could occur.

Of course, most people did not forget to put their helmets on before going EVA and Alan did not think the feature was overly useful until now.

He looked up again, trying to out-speed the visor, but it slammed over his eyes before the muscles of his neck had even began moving his skull upward.

An entry into the SpaceX program, for which one of the main requirement had been that the suit look "badass", the EXO suit was originally intended for deep sea operations without the need of a remote controlled submarine. It had performed well in the Marianas' trench, but this outer-space variant had yet to prove itself.

He reached up and closed the airlock's outer door, twisting the lever shut with a grunt.

This suit hugged his skin tightly, to the point he felt almost naked, he could have sworn he felt every bumps in the bright red metal handle. "Alright, pressurize airlock five, I'm hungry."

He could see inside the station through the ALON porthole, but there was no one on the other side.

"Guys?" He checked his PDA again. Twenty three minutes had passed since the test's beginning, ten minutes since last communication. "HAL, open the pod bay door."

The joke earned him no response. They rarely did; astronauts were such serious fellows, a lot of the team thought Alan to be too juvenile and exuberant, they saw him as nothing more than a glorified mechanic… But the man seriously doubted they would just strand him in an airlock to make a point.

He reached for his belt, but remembered he had not brought any tools for this test flight. The airlock contained only an extinguisher and crowbar, locked behind an emergency glass.

"Well this is a shit idea…" He muttered, eyeing the Kevlar/Nano-cellulose polymer making up the space suit's lower layer. Could a shard of glass pierce it? The manual guaranteed you could not die from hypoxia using this suit, as it maintained the body's shape using memory gel instead of an oxygen cushion, but he was not eager to try.

"Guys, this is Strauss; it's not funny, open the door or I'm opening it myself."

Static screamed in his ears, Bane's voice echoing in the background, "…Trauss! What a… in?"

"Airlock five!" He yelled over the distorted signal. It sounded like Bane was talking to him from a plane with all windows open or something.

"Can…Way? Ma…" The high-pitched whine in the background became so loud it seemed to be coming from inside Strauss' skull. "…function!"

"Fuck that." He cursed, shutting off the radio. For a moment, he enjoyed the silence, then got to work.

Pushing himself off the opposite wall, he slammed shoulder-first into the emergency glass, shards drifting off in every directions, but none piercing the suit's resilient outer layer.

Strauss caught a thin and sharp fragment with one hand, the crowbar with the other and drifted to the inner airlock.

Built into the door, a finger's length to the left of where the handle would be on the other side, was a rectangular plaque with yellow stripes painted on it, bolted to the door with special star-shaped screws. With his tools, removing the plaque would have been a matter of seconds, but now he had to shove the glass shard's tip into the top right screw and push until the tip splintered to adopt the same rough shape as the screw's head. Strauss managed to get three full rotations before the shard shattered fully.

At this point, the screw was poking out of the plaque by a few millimeters, enough for him to pry it off with the crowbar. He had to brace himself against the floor to get any leverage and when he smacked the plaque with his crowbar the kinetic energy almost threw him backward.

The airlock's inner bulkhead had been build to withstand micro-meteorites and extreme conditions, not a tungsten crowbar swung by a thirty-seven manual worker in a hurry.

The plate gave in somewhat, denting just enough for Strauss to squeeze his crowbar under its edge and pry it off fully.

There was no override or safety system in there, only the door's inner mechanisms; gears and a H shaped set of titanium bars.

Using the crowbar, he pulled the right side bar down and shoved the left one up with his bare hand. The bulkhead gave in, shoved lightly by the pressure difference. Letting go, Strauss took a step back and watch the door slide open lazily. He knew it would not be an explosive decompression, as oxygen actually trickled in vacuum, but it was still underwhelming.

He stepped in the station and, his helmet detecting breathable air, its tiny engines whirred in Strauss' ears until the whole head piece collapsed down into a high-tech turtleneck, the helmet's internal structure looking like Alan wore ski goggles and headphones.

The mic was strapped to his throat still, so he thumbed the on button once more, "Strauss here, I'm in, what's going on?"

Bane answered, but was drowned in static and Alan heard only something about toasts.

"Roger that, I'm on my way."

He debated taking the suit off, but decided being EVA ready was not a bad thing, at least until he understood what was going on. He couldn't wait to get the catheter and colonic probe out, though.

"If you'd told me a week ago I'd have to shove tubes up my ass and my dick to fly, I would have been very skeptical…" His snide remark went unanswered, as he was alone in this section. Last time he'd seen everyone, they were on the observation deck, supervising the test flight, so he decided to start there.

The crowbar in hand, he silently challenged every bulkhead he came across to try and stop him, but the fully analogue pieces of engineering all acted as intended and he found Bane alone on the observation deck, also wearing an EXO suit and peeking down a small telescope.

She looked up for an instant, her traits frozen in a constant frown. If she was relieved to see Alan alive, she must've forgotten to tell her face.

Bane was barely in her forties and looked in her mid-twenties, her short brown hairs and athletic build giving away a military background.

A second later, she was once again leaning on the telescope. Oddly enough, the thing was not pointed towards the limitless mysteries of outer space, but down towards… Connecticut?

"What's going on?"

"Solar flare; half our systems went offline, including life support."

He looked up and saw that, indeed, the neons lining every room were much dimmer than usual, though not alarmingly so.

He thought of asking about the risks of death by radiation poisoning, but decided he'd rather not think about that, "What are you looking at?" He then spoke, turning his eyes back to the earth. Rio was still in sight, but no longer lit up as it had been earlier, though it still shone orange against the dark blue background that was South-America.

"Solar flare usually means power outage, but we spotted bright lights all over the planet for a whole minute, then it all went dark."

"Explosions?"

Bane's head shook slowly, "Even nukes don't shine this bright for this long… It looked like storms, but without pause between lightning."

A hatch hissed open over their heads, a living stereotype of the Russian cosmonaut drifting into the room with a smile. Mikail Hornick was actually of Czech origin, but had grown up in Austin, Texas. He retained a slight Slovak accent, but people usually knew better than to point it out. "It was real pretty, I tell you; the whole planet was lit up like it were day time! I hope I never see something like that again."

"You mean you hope you see it again?" Strauss corrected, wondering to himself how he could have missed something this impressive.

"Hell no! Something this pretty, it's bound to try and kill you! Look the shit it's got us in!" Mike drifted up to the wide sheet of translucent ceramic and took a quick look at the earth, before turning his eyes back to Strauss. "Houston's not responding, our navigation computers are out and we need to evacuate the station now, before it's completely out of power."

It was Alan's turn to look down, a solid lump forming in his throat. "Wait, how are we going to… We can't re-enter the atmosphere without calculating an entry vector!"

"Hey, lucky I'm here, eh?" Mike scoffed with a wink. "I'll get us home, old guy, don't you worry about that!"

Bane nodded and turned to the two men, "You have five minutes to grab your things and join us in the shuttle. I can't see any lights where Houston's supposed to be; they're likely suffering power outages from the flare."

Strauss re-checked his wrist mounted PDA. "If I was out there, with no EM shielding, during a solar flare, this thing would be fried…" He presented it to them, multiple system diagnostics scrolling over the screen, all reading nominal.

Bane only shrugged and Mike was already on his way out, not looking like he'd even understood Strauss. "Why are you guys so casual about this? There might have been a nuclear war down on earth or something!" Mike ignored him yet again and Bane went back to the telescope.

After almost a minute of being stared at intently by Strauss, she finally spoke again, cold and calm, as though she was reading a rehearsed speech "Look, I'll let it slip because you were not trained as extensively as you should have been, but up here, if you lose your cool for even a second, people die, so get your shit together and go make sure this shuttle doesn't fall apart on re-entry."

Strauss felt his cheeks burn in a mix of anger and shame. Of course they seemed unfazed by the situation; they could not afford to be fazed, and neither could he. "Sorry, stressful evening." He muttered, rubbing the back of his head and looking at the floor in a contrite manner.

Bane actually snickered at that, "Is it that much different?"

He gave her a blank stare for a moment, "From fixing shuttles on the ground?"

"No," she replied, serious again, "from serving in a submarine."

"The royal navy never asked us to take an Astute through the atmosphere." Was all he replied as he followed Mike through the door. He still heard Bane snickering again. Bane always acted all-business, especially in crisis operations, these _cracks_, the nervous laugh, were somewhat worrying; signs that she was stressed far beyond what she allowed herself to show.

Whatever Bane was seeing through that telescope of hers, it was not doing her nerves any good…


	2. DCGD: Jones 1

**A/N: Doesn't follow the same character as chapter 1, as inspiration couldn't flow with that storyline, I need characters who's thoughts and behaviour I can reliably describe and relate to, and I'm no goddamn astronaut :/ So, let's try this, same premise, same timeline, different cast and my trademark narrative method, because this is actually the first storie I ever wrote, a rewrite of it, anyway, and I want to do it justice.**

Knocking, three, four, five times. Hard knocks that rattle the wood and the flimsy hinges. I don't wake up because I wasn't asleep to begin with, but the sudden intrusion in my insomnia-induced internet session not only ruins my previous efforts but also slaps any sleepiness out of me better than a gallon of black coffee could.

"Mister Jones!" A man calls outside, sounding like he's used to people doing what he tells them, "this is the police, please open the door!"

The girl I'm watching on the laptop's dirty screen is of legal age, I'm pretty sure, and I haven't smoked a single gram of weed since high-school. Why the hell is the police knocking at my door?

Throwing on some trousers that aren't covered with bird shit, I decide to find out. I must be sleepier than I thought because I almost knock over a Rakyat totem from my "Shrine", next to the door.

The bolts slide out of the way and I don't have time to even turn the knob that four of New York's law enforcement officers shove past me to poke around my apartment like they have a warrant, which, as they confirm a moment later, they don't.

Two of them are my age, which means they're rookies, one's pretty enough that I try to smile at her, earning myself a glare so cold I can feel it freeze the back of my brain. The third is a veteran, probably close to retirement and if I had to describe him later on, I'd say he looks so much like Clint Eastwood it has to be intentional.

Our final musketeer isn't in uniform, he's rocking that trench-coat/fedora look that went out of fashion back when dinosaurs roamed the earth, though he doesn't look any older than his late thirties.

"Are you Bryan Jones?" Sherlock speaks, using that affable tone villains get when gloating to a defeated hero. He approaches the shrine and picks up one of the many framed pictures neatly arranged on the stand. There's two pictures on that frame; the first and largest one shows me and my big brother Carl crouching next to a sleeping Komodo dragon, with Carl holding the camera selfie-style.

The second shows only my terrified face as I sit on a branch far too thin for my frame, with the blurred outline of a dozen reptiles trying to claw their way up our tree. It's not as clear as the first because Carl was laughing his ass off as he took it.

"Please answer the question, sir!" Goes magnum when I take more than five fucking seconds to consider said question.

So I say the first thing that comes to mind; "Only on Fridays, sir."

That gets no reaction from the cute cop, but at this point I've given up all hope anyway; I closed my internet browser in a hurry, but didn't bother with pop-ups and there's now midget porn playing in a silent loop on my laptop.

Somehow, fedora guy does think my reply is pretty funny and chuckles so low I don't think he meant for me to hear it.

The rookie cops have finished their quick search and come back empty-handed, "Nothing, sir." They both say, which is a bit redundant, but people often feel the need to confirm what others can clearly see. It's like asking if someone's really going to drink some weird local brew they've already paid for. Everyone knows the answer, everyone still needs to have it spelled out.

"Do you have any pets, mister Jones?" The fedora-man asks, his voice so suave this can be nothing but a trap.

"Only on Fridays?"

He doesn't think it's funny anymore. He lights himself a cigarette without letting go of the picture, scratching a match on his coat's sleeve. "Listen," he says, no longer affable in the least, steely blue eyes locking mine like laser sights, "I have zero patience and even less time to deal with your bullshit right now, people have been hurt and I need you to answer my questions as clearly and honestly as you can, you understand me?"

Yup, that's not about a noise complaint or my past drug consumption. I nod, shut up and listen.

"Good, please sit down." My apartment's rather tiny, the front door leads straight to the kitchen, which leads straight to my bedroom. I have only two chairs though, so the coat guys and I are the only ones who get seats. "There are rumours that you own multiple reptiles; snakes and lizards, is that true?"

He puts the picture down so that it faces me, as if he's already found all the evidence he need.

"No…" I clear my throat, realizing they can see the vivariums, aquariums and bird cages strewn around my bedroom, kitchen and living room, "But sometimes an animal gets sick and I need to bring it home for the weekend."

That gives him pause, I can actually see his poker face crumble as he tries to figure out what the hell I'm talking about.

"I work at a pet shop downtown, exotic animals." I elaborate, but that doesn't clear his confusion.

Scratching his chin's stubbles for a moment, he trades glances with his colleagues then pushes on, "Why only on weekends?"

"Because I work full time the rest of the week, no need to have the animals at home then."

He nods once, "Are you a veterinarian?"

My scoff answers his question, but, hey, people like when others spell it out for them, "No, but I'm trying to be a zoologist, just three more years to go, so I'm the most qualified to see to the animals' needs…" Yeah, and I'm fucking proud of it, so much I add, "To be honest, most of my coworkers would likely end up getting their face bit off by the bastards."

And that sets off some kind of social trip wire, like drawing a darts game on the empire state building after 9/11 would have. The young male cop's on me in a blink, his fingers digging into my shoulders like talons.

"You think that's funny, you sack of shit!?"

And my reply just comes out on its own, "Only on Fri…"

I'm not quite clear on what happens next. Either he slams my head on the table or it jumps to give me a kiss. The world goes dark, someone yells something about outside and I wake up with a bag of frozen carrots held against my forehead. I'm holding it up, sitting upright, though it seems my brain's only just rebooted.

And I've got no clue where they got these carrots from, my freezer's empty.

"My sincere ap…" I put the carrots down on the table, burry my face in them and shout as pain finally catches up with me. My nose is broken, I know it is because it's the second time it gets broken that way, fortunately, someone's already re-set it and all I need to do now is ride down the red fog.

"Fuck that hurt!" I finally call, rising to find blood's pooled around the sack. The rookie's nowhere to be seen and the girl is actually grinning to herself by the front door. "What's his problem?"

The veteran's the one that answers, putting a massive hand on my shoulder in a gesture that's meant to be friendly but has me go so stiff my balls are now having a turf war with my kidneys. "A young boy was attacked just down the street, in the park. That was five hours ago now. Eyewitnesses claim they saw a huge lizard, it…" He pauses. The girl stops grinning and blue eyes vanish under the edge of a fedora hat, "Kid had his face ripped off, bones scrapped clean, the docs are doing their best but it doesn't look good."

Oh… Oh fuck. I don't want to think about shit like that, fuck I'd rather not even have heard what he just said, yet the logical part of my brain starts a tally of all the animals I know who could do that to a kid's face. Huge is a subjective term and I don't know how big the kid actually is, so I don't rule out normal sized candidates.

The list is rather short. Crocodilians would have ripped the boy's entire head off and taken off with it, leaving us with turtles, monitors and iguanas. Voicing this observation aloud gets me another set of odd looks and I reposition the carrot bag so it will cushion any possible attempts at using my face as a stapler again.

Fedora dude's back, but he's not talking like a supervillain anymore, he sounds genuinely respectful this time, "How much do you know about these animals?"

"Enough to run people through a tutorial on how not to get their face bi…" The cringe is audible. I use that sentence quite often, _or it'll bite your face off,_ I doubt it's going to be that popular now. "I know enough, but we don't sell anything that could do this much damage to someone, because they're illegal to sell in this state." They're just staring at me and that does not help my nerves, so I babble on, "I wish I could help you, but it's most likely a rabid dog and people weren't looking close enough."

The vet looks at me, then at the man sitting in front of me, "Still no word on those… Animal specialists?"

"Wildlife control?" The other scoffs, "They'll have people over in the morning."

This is all just an elaborate introduction to a job offer. I know it, they know it, only I've just had my face smashed in and therefore am not in a negotiating mood. "I have work in the morning, if we're done here, I'd like to go to bed…"

A glance towards the bedroom tells me the midgets are still at it.

Of all people in this room, the girl's the last one I expected to come to me with the deal, but it might be precisely for that reason they let her, or because they've seen me glancing at her ass a few times. "It was a lizard," she assures, fully confident in her statement, before pointing to the Komodo dragon picture, "One of those, and it's still loose, if we wait it might end up across town and we'd only know about it after it attacks another kid." She has hazel eyes, they seemed green earlier. That other cop might have knock the colours out of me… "Do you want that on your conscience?"

"What do you want me to do? Take saliva samples from the boy's wound, compare footprints, study bite profile? I don't do that stuff, I shove calcium supplements down their throat, help out when they're having trouble shed and study their behavior so I can tell people how to treat them…"

They completely ignore the last part, with the big guy at my back still squeezing my shoulder, "Just come take a look in the park, see if you spot something we missed, that's all we ask."

And here we go, "Am I going to get paid for it?" They actually glare at me. Oh, yeah, I'm so evil for demanding remuneration when people's lives are at stake! "What? You're telling me the police will hire mediums without second thoughts but an expert on exotic animals won't fit in your budget?"

The girl nods to the pictures on the shrine. My brother's a signal specialist in the australian navy, he's been stationed all over the southern pacific for the last decade, bringing me along to do some backpack tourism whenever the navy accepts to cover the plane ticket. There are pictures of us in every backwater island between India and New Zealand, pictures where we're seen messing with everything from gators to cassowaries and even a beached shark. "You have a lot of experience in dealing with wild animals?"

To which I reply, glancing at the Komodo dragon picture, "I've got a lot of experience running away from them, yeah, the guides kept telling us not to fuck around with these... Pretty much why we _did _fuck around with these."

She turns to the man behind me, "I don't know about you, sergeant, but I've never actually been out of Jersey…" There is a lot more she could say, but we all get the picture, all she knows is dogs, cats and perhaps hamsters, and the others are city cops too, whereas I'm the closest thing to an expert as they can find on such short notice, so she just trails off and lets us fill the blanks.

I like her already, we both lack patience for useless bullshit.

Fedora-man sighs, as if the money's going to come out of his own pocket, "Fine, I'll clear it out with central later, can we go now? That thing won't wait around on our account."

So I get dressed, opting for a black hoodie with red stripes on one sleeve and the N7 logo on the chest, because I'm a geek and it's the closest I have to camouflage. The cargo pants, however, are actually digital camo, octagons colored white and grey, brown and black, green and grey, so on, in a rather pitiful attempt at mimicking ACU. They're not military issue, but they are nylon backed and tear proof, or so the paintball store owner assured me.

That was back when I thought I'd enjoy paintball, but it turned out purposefully putting yourself in a situation where people shoot at you with .38 caliber riot guns is not as enjoyable as it may sound.

All I bring with me is my cellphone and apartment keys, which the cops seem to be thankful for, they might have expected me to try and bring a gun or something. I never even touched a gun before, let alone own one.

The cop who bashed my face in is fuming in the hallway and seems conflicted about seeing me again. He's happy at first, then sees I'm not handcuffed and frowns, then the girl, closing the door behind us, sums it up, "Not our man, but he wants to help us." And I can just see the dude's brain go blank.

Blame it on my lack of sleep or his tactful interrogation methods, but it's only now that I realize they were here to arrest me, since I'm the only asshole in what might be ten city blocks who's known to own reptiles. They figured I was the one who set the things on a kid or some twisted shit like that. Hell, I'd beat the shit out of me too if I were in his shoes.

"If it is a Komodo Monitor, like you guys seem to think," I tell him, walking at his side down the hallway, "it was smuggled here illegally and by someone who doesn't know what the fuck they're doing. Beat the shit out of them for me and we'll call it even."

We exchange a smile after that. Mine is interrupted by another nosebleed.

There's two police cruisers parked in front of the building and the big guy plays chauffeur to me, opening the back door and everything, while the rookies pile into the other car.

The two cops in my car finally introduce themselves; Clint Eastwood's lost brother goes by the name Sergeant Robert Clarke and his all but fashionable colleague is called Inspector Jacob Bartlett

Jack and Bob, fair enough.

"Can you tell me how it went down?" I ask once we're moving.

Turns out the park really is close by, because they barely have time to give me a quick rundown.

People heard cries for help and saw four kids on bikes rolling down the street at top speed. This was at ten o'clock, PM. At ten and five minutes, two parents, both fathers, arrived in the park to find a fifth kid had fallen from his bike just outside the wood and was curled in foetal position, they began running towards him, but something _jumped_ onto the boy and began hissing at them, it walked on all four, but stood on its hind legs once or twice as they tried to scare it off. Both men said the thing was over seven feet tall when at full height.

They show me pictures taken with a smartphone from across the street, but it's just two humanoid shapes waving at a sickly yellow blur.

The animal pounced one of the men who, despite the thing's impressive size, did not topple over and actually threw the animal off himself before stomping its face a couple of times.

Jack shakes his head as he recounts his observations on the tale, "Both men confirm this, and the witness has bite marks on his shoulders that corroborate his version… I mean, the man is in very good physical condition, but that animal was two feet bigger than him, I just don't see how he managed to support its weight."

Adrenaline changes all the rules, logic does not apply when you're being attacked by Godzilla's baby.

Paramedics and cops fill the park's playground, blue and red lights giving their shadows a touch of Night of the Living Dead.

They let me out of the car, because police cruisers aren't meant to give their passengers all that much initiative in that regard, and I walk straight to the ambulance, where two men, one in his thirties and the other in his early fifties, sitting straight on the grass, their backs to the ambulance's rear bumper.

Jack catches up with me before I get to talk to them, though. "Can't let you near witnesses." He objects, stopping me just within earshot of the two clearly exhausted men. "You're still a suspect."

He's right about one thing, the bandaged man, the youngest of the two, is one tough looking motherfucker, and he's heard that last sentence. Those two things together don't exactly bode well for my short-term physical integrity.

He charges like that buffalo in Indonesia, being stopped inches from ramming me by the set of tree trunks Robert calls his arms. "Is he the motherfucker who did this?! You did this, you sack of shit!?"

Twice today I've been called that, I sure hope it doesn't stick. Jack stops me from answering, his eyes wide and bordering on panic. "Mister Tomlinson, please calm down, we're…"

I pull my phone, browse through the images folder and find a full body shot of a Komodo Monitor without me and Carl in front of it, it's the same as on the other picture. "Did this attack you?"

Jack throws me a dark look, Bob is struggling to hold the adrenaline filled father and I'm just holding out my phone like I want to take a picture of it all.

He slaps it out of my hands, "I'll rip your fucking head off, you hear me!?" and, intending to keep that promise, he rips himself free, batting away the massive policeman holding him as though he were just a minor nuisance.

"Oh shit." Is the only insight I have to offer on the matter before spinning on my heels and running straight for the playground.

I'm not much of a fighter, but there are two things I do better than anyone; run away and climb. In this case, I climb straight onto the monkey bars, drag myself towards the slide and, from there, jump a two meters gap between the modules and the tall wooden beam holding up a set of swings.

Only then do I look down to see the furious man clutching his injured shoulder. He can't climb for shit in his condition, but I see in his eyes he would totally come after my ass.

Looking at one another for a whole minute, we both sort of go _what now?_

"You can't stay there all day!" He says. As if on a cue, he's tackled by the female cop from earlier, the tiny woman pulling some Jiu Jitsu shit to twist and push the massive dude into submission. _No, but I can damn well stay here until you're locked up, dickhead…_

Although Jack refused to tell the man anything at first, the rookie cop doesn't seem to have an issue clearing things out. "He's agreed to help us find the animal that did this, he's here to help, please calm yourself."

"Your buddy called him a suspect!"

She shakes her head in frustration, "Sir, I can't divulge information on the investigation at this time, but I can promise you this man is as likely to be responsible as any other citizen of this city. Please calm yourself."

That should do the trick, but it doesn't, the man keeps cursing at me, struggling to free himself until two more cops finally intervene and drag him off to a car.

"You're a real people person, aren't you?" The police-woman scoffs as I climb down, "Nice moves, by the way, where did you learn to climb like that?"

I'm a little too shaken up to laugh or think of a witty reply, so I just tell her the actual story, "I'm the youngest of four brothers, and our father had... Issues. I learned to get my ass out of reach at a young age." I'm not about to recount my life story and I can see she hopes I won't. "Anyway, that man was not bitten by a Monitor."

The thin smile that had been tugging at her lips, or it might have been a scowl from all I can see in this red-blue lighting, melts away. "You saw the wounds?

-No need," I glace back at the enraged bastard, cuffed and struggling at the back of a police car, "nobody should have that kind of energy so long after being bitten by a Varanid.

-They gave him anti-biotics…" She's smart, she's seen nature documentaries about all the bacteria in the Komodo Monitor's mouth.

"That would neutralize the infection, but not the venom." But I don't have time to run her through the latest studies and my own personal experience. Point is, no animal keeps rotting meat in their mouth. Ever. But a monitor's bite is, indeed, very much lethal.

Jack joins us at that time anyway and he's only heard one part of the conversation, apparently, "If it's not one of those things, what on earth could have attacked these people?

-Nothing that I know." Is all I come up with after a few seconds of mental reviewing. It's cold, I'm tired, the moon is nothing but a savage grin in the tar-black sky and there is not a single muscle in my body that doesn't ache after this bit of parkour.

It's just gonna be one of those nights.

"You mean this is a new species?" The investigator is dubious, and with good reason.

"Hell no! I mean it's not common, enough so that I didn't hear about it before, like I told you, I'm not exactly a certified zoologist yet and even one of these would need more data to go on."

He hands me back my phone, then shows me his, there are pictures of a bloodied human skull forming a mosaic on his screen, all at a different angle, the same twin green orbs sitting in their orbits, like bloodshot garnets.

Realization hits my stomach before it hits my brain and I'm already tipped forward, hocking up yesterday's meal, when I understand these are pictures of the kid that was attacked.

"Jesus, Bartlett! What did you expect?" The girl hisses, though she seems more frustrated than angry. This is a conversation they have already had.

"Well, on the plus side, I'm now convinced you didn't do it, you can hardly fake that kind of reaction…" His amusement is quite fake, nobody here thinks there's anything funny about what's going on now. Fucking hell, what the _fuck _did this?

They see it in my face, hell, a blind man would see it in my face; I'm as clueless as they are.

Somehow, I'm involved now nonetheless, part of the gang, so they don't send me home just yet, instead Bob calls us over to a spot near the playground, the soft sand there disturbed by two set of fresh footprints.

Fun fact; I've got the same shoe size as the big ass dude that was chasing me a second ago, meaning I'm, in term of bone structure, the same size as he is. People tend to seem bigger when they're pissed off and built like a fire engine.

"So?" I shrug, looking at the easily distinguishable patterns of each shoes.

He looks around, the sandbox is about twenty meters by forty, stopping about ten meters from the pedestrian path into the woods. That's where the kid was attacked, just off the path. "Maybe we can find footprints." Bob says, getting off his knees to walk in the completely opposite direction. We all watch him as he opens the trunk of his patrol car and pulls out a riot vest and what seems to be two huge lead pipes screwed into a chocolate box with a plastic handle on the back of it.

He slips the vest on and it's only when he loads .12 Gauge shells into the bottom lead pipe that I understand it's a shotgun he's got in his hands now.

I play Call of Duty, Far Cry and way more zombie games than any healthy human should and have always thought of myself as knowledgeable in firearms. Seeing him walk towards us, loading a weapon so massive and alien in design I thought it was plumbing, well, that removes any illusions I might have regarding my gun nuttiness.

The others are as surprised as I am, but for totally different reasons. "Haven't those things been phases out yet?" The girl speaks as if he just came back with a tommy gun.

Jack's more concerned than surprised, "We're in a residential zone," he reminds his partner, "I'm not sure this is a good idea."

But the big man works the pump of his big gun like an overcompensating Arnie, muttering something about bean bags and not being such a pussy. "Lizie," he then tells the rookie, "you stay close to our friend and bring up the rear, I'll take point." As he's talking, he pulls a solid steel flashlight from his belt and holds it against the barrel of his shotgun with one hand, securing the whole mess together with a few lengths of duct tape.

Take point. I heard those words before, accompanied by the names Jackson, Soap and Ramirez, it means you're the one up front getting shot at and doing all the heavy lifting. It also means everyone's following behind you and you can't follow someone unless they're actually going somewhere.

I know, I have badass deduction skills… "Where are we going?

-Where do you think?" It's the other rookie, he's got a set of black and yellow guns in his hands, four of them.

Taser guns, I'm not _completely _clueless, what I'm wondering is, "Why don't I get a weapon?"

They all opt against answering that question. Pricks.

"We're going to look for tracks and follow them into the woods, where the animal was last seen," Jack explains," stuffing the Taser in his inner pockets. The other three already have the same models jammed in their belts, so they stuff the spares in breast pockets of their uniforms.

The plan is simple; pick up the track, find the thing, kill it and take a picture of its corpse to figure out what it is. There's four armed and trained police officers and one college student who ought to know how to deal with this type of wild animal, what could possibly go wrong?

The answer comes straight to us without invitation or warning. Nothing can go wrong with our tiny little expedition; all can go wrong with everything else.

It starts with a boom. Thunder or explosion, I can't tell, but it's close and six high-rises just vanish from the skyline beyond the park, like they were just sucked underground. There is a moment of quiet, just long enough for my heart to skip a beat, then shit hits the fan.

Either the park falls or the city block rises, either way everything with concrete or pavement on it ends up a good thirty meters higher than it was before, a patrol car that was parked right on the fault line does a balancing act and finally comes crashing through the geyser of putrid water from a sewage pipe and lands straight onto the ambulance, both cars fusing together in their center.

Some policemen run for the woods, other, like Jack and the rookie, dive to cover under trees or the playground's modules.

Me, I just stand there. There is no higher brain function, just images and sound being fed directly to me.

Screams of panic rise all over the city, howls of agony like those of a mad wolf pack.

The ground shakes some more and the edge of that newly formed cliff _bows_, bends inward, moves forward in a decidedly ominous way. It's only when an entire apartment building comes crashing down, about a hundred meters down the left side, that I realize now's time to _fucking leg it_.

The last thing I hear before the woods engulf me is someone asking someone else to "Get it off me!"


End file.
